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XXX- The Superbit

XXX- The Superbit Edition - on DVD

Vin Diesel plays the “anti-Bond” in this rollicking spy yarn that draws liberally and unashamedly from the classic spy movie franchise.

Diesel is Xander Cage, an “adrenaline junkie” who’s part athlete, part showman, and part self-anointed judge/jury/vigilante. We meet him as he pronounces and performs sentence on a California state senator he deems is “a dick” (and from the brief bit we see of the pol he may be right) by stealing and wrecking his car in a most spectacular fashion.

Xander, known to his friends as “X,” is recruited by the tough as nails agent Augustus Gibbons (Samuel L. Jackson) who gives him the choice of becoming a secret agent or going to jail (tough decision, eh?) and puts him through a couple of life-or-death tests to see if he has the right stuff to out-Bond James.

Well, as it turns out, X lives for the stuff they put him through and is subsequently sent into action in the Czech Republic, where a group called Anarchy 99 is up to no good.

It’s classic spy stuff, without breaking any new ground, but made fresh by X’s anti-establishment character and Diesel’s strong portrayal of the hero. The stunts are big and spectacular, the cars are fast and furious and the women typical of the genre.

Rob Cohen’s direction is fine for the most part, but we noticed that you have to sit through every big stunt from every angle at which it was filmed and this not only slows down the action but tends to desensitize you from its excitement. Perhaps they had to justify the expense of having all those cameras around by making sure the footage made it to the final film…

We also had problems with the score. While some of it is classic symphonic stuff, a lot of it is hard driving techno and though in places it was necessary for the story, in other places it just gets in the way rather than enhancing the mood unobtrusively.

Still, none of this makes the movie unwatchable and, instead, help showcase the fact that this is meant to be “not your ordinary Bond film.”

So fans of the genre will undoubtedly enjoy XXX. It has explosions, fast cars and fast women, big guns, and a megalomaniacal villain worthy of any Bond movie.

This version of XXX, as is usual with Columbia Tristar’s Superbit Collection, eschews supplementary material in favor of high end video and audio. The Superbit Collection is generally a real toy for the home theater snob, utilizing as it does a special high bit rate digital encoding process that focuses on optimal video quality while simultaneously offering users the choice of both dts and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround audio.

Most of the Superbit titles we’ve reviewed have been spectacular, and we went into XXX expecting a remarkable home theater experience. And for the most part we weren’t disappointed, though we were surprised that many shots didn’t jump out of the screen at us in the way we expected. Some of it seemed a tad soft, and we were watching it through a progressive scan DVD player feeding a high end Sony XBR widescreen rear projector.

Not that it’s a slouch, of course, but we expected even more. Maybe they’ve just spoiled us - or maybe the source material wasn’t all it could have been. In the end, this is not the best Superbit title we've seen when it comes to picture quality. Despite that, however, the overall anamorphic widescreen (16x9 TV compatible) picture is very good.

Audio, on the other hand, is spectacular, and this really pays off in a movie where there’s lots of exploding, shooting, and driving. The surrounds aren’t used as much as we like, but they’re used well regardless and the overall audio quality runs the gamut from great rumbling bass to lovely ka-chings of shell casings hitting the floor - and everything between.

The downside is that the fine audio quality means the driving and pounding techno music really comes through loudly and clearly and, to our classic rock’n’roll roots, this is a shame. But to be fair, it’s also how it should be when you're trying to appeal to more than just middle aged farts like us.

We didn’t get a chance to see the original DVD release of XXX, so can’t comment on how its audio and video stack up compared to this Superbit one, but if it’s like most of the ones we have been able to compare it’s a subtle but definite improvement over the original release. The “average consumer” may not notice or care, but the home theater aficionado will probably be pleased.

And that’s the audience at which the Superbit Collection is aimed.

XXX - The Superbit Collection - from Columbia Tristar Home Video
124 min. anamorphic widescreen (2.35:1), 16x9 TV compatible, dts and Dolby Digital 5.1 surround
Starring Vin Diesel, Asia Argento, Marton Scokas, Samuel L. Jackson
Produced by Neal H. Moritz
Written by Rich Wilkes, Directed by Rob Cohen

 

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